A Murderous Malady

by Christine Trent

  I couldn’t help but smile at the unintentional wit. “Nevertheless, I am glad we could be of service to your family. I suspect there are many more with illness behind their doors who require help. We shall return again tomorrow to check on you all again.”

  If Mrs. Maddox was better, I planned to question her regarding her comments about Barton Maddox and murder. Although I believed her statements to be the gibberish of an unwell mind, I had to be sure. I also wanted to alleviate the peculiar sensation I had that something was not quite right about the supposed death of Barton Maddox. After all, the family had never seen his body. Was I grasping at straws?

  Maddox’s eyes widened. “I would be grateful for your visit. And … I will let you know if I secure the position at the brewery.”

  Something important occurred to me. “This Mr. Davies you mentioned. How long has he run the brewery?”

  “I’m not sure. No, wait, he told me he has been there for five years.”

  Five years was a long time in which to witness the goings-on of a neighborhood. I needed to chat with Mr. Davies.

  Harris and Lambert entered the front room, indicating that they had done all they could. With assurances that we wouldn’t forget the Maddoxes, we left to return to the wagon. I hoped that the driver hadn’t gotten spooked enough to leave us there despite how much I had paid him for the job.

  As I followed everyone out, I paused to look back at the Maddox residence. It was a shabby, sad hovel in the midst of so many others. Did George Maddox contemplate the downturn of his luck every time he walked up to his warped door? Had Isabel Maddox made the same reflection every time she pulled up the ratty coverlet on their lumpy bed? It was frightening how far one could fall in such a short space of time.

  I shook my head and turned to follow my nurses once more. I would accompany them back to the Establishment, then return with Mary to visit the Lion Brewery.

  The driver was indeed still waiting. We all climbed back onto our rough seats in the rear of the wagon. Mary was pensive as we rode off, and I thought that the second visit to the Maddox home had been even more distressing for her than the first. As we left Soho, the sky literally brightened and Mary spoke for the first time in nearly an hour.

  “Miss Florence, it seems to me that Soho causes the death of anyone who lives there.”

  I thought of Sidney’s servants, Fenton and Pagg. “Or of anyone who merely visits,” I said grimly.

  CHAPTER 10

  With Harris and Lambert safely returned to the Establishment, I asked Mary to return to Soho with me.

  “Again?” she asked, her expression stricken.

  “Yes. Do you remember Mr. Maddox mentioning a Mr. Davies at the Lion Brewery? I believe it would be helpful to speak with him. He may have seen something the day Liz’s carriage came through.”

  Mary shook her head but didn’t protest.

  We returned to Soho by way of taxi, but this driver refused to wait even a few minutes for us. The neighborhood was becoming familiar enough to me that I almost didn’t mind.

  “Have a care, ladies,” the driver said gallantly, tipping his hat before hurrying off with his nickering horse. Even the mare seemed unhappy to have driven into Broad Street.

  As if to emphasize its offended equine sensibilities, the horse deposited a great steaming pile of excrement onto the street as it trotted away. It was particularly malodorous in the late-August heat.

  Mary wrinkled her nose in repugnance. “Let’s hope the inside of the brewery doesn’t stink so badly,” she said, holding a gloved finger beneath her nose.

  We entered the Lion Brewery via its Red Lion Inn entrance. What better way to introduce your wares to the surrounding neighborhood than with what was essentially a shop full of samples?

  I had never actually entered such a socially inferior establishment before. My mother would have been clawing at the draperies if she’d had any idea her daughter was frequenting a public house.

  “Miss Florence, what is so amusing?” Mary asked as she removed her gloves while we stood in the entryway and stuffed them inside her dress pocket. She was already opening her notebook to a blank page.

  “Nothing at all, Goose,” I said putting away my own gloves. They were slick with perspiration, and it was a relief to be rid of them.

  I was surprised to find that the interior of the Lion’s public house wasn’t nearly as seedy as I had expected it to be.

  To the left were an assortment of mismatched tables and chairs, some with occupants who glanced at us curiously but soon returned to their games. The air was filled with the clicking of dice, slapping of cards, and jingling of coins on the tabletops as the men bantered jovially with one another.

  An enormous brick fireplace dominated a rear wall, and a large, square bin stood to one side of it. The bin was heaped with coal in preparation for cooler weather, and I suspected it was more coal than could be found in total in the rest of the neighborhood.

  I had rather expected the ceiling to be low, made even lower by old, scarred wood beams, as if the building had been some old medieval manor, but I was pleased to find that this was not so.

  The ceiling was in fact at least ten feet high, well plastered and painted, and several gasoliers hung from it. Candle lanterns on most of the tables assisted the gasoliers in illuminating the spacious room.

  Certainly there was the odor of spilled ale permeating the space, with an underlay of old vomit not quite scrubbed out of the planked floors, but all in all, I thought Middlesex Hospital was far more frightful a place.

  To our right was a long bar of polished oak. Occupying half the wall around the bar were about a dozen barrels that lay stacked on their sides. The rest of the wall contained shelves filled with glasses, tankards, and a variety of mismatched dishes.

  At the left end of the bar was a doorway, with a sign over it reading, “Worker Entrance to Brewery.”

  It was a place for men, to be certain, but compared to everything outside of it, the Red Lion Inn was really quite innocuous.

  The only disturbing part of the public house was the man who stood behind the bar, wiping out glasses with a rag that was old and stained. He was staring straight at Mary and me.

  “Yes?” he said impatiently, as we were clearly dawdling in the entryway. “Where you two ladies intended to go, are you sure?” Your husbands wander out of your home to sneak some peace and quiet here? Have a look about to see if they’re here.”

  He said this as if it were a regular occurrence.

  Mary huffed in indignation. “Certainly not! My Milo would never have gone off to drown himself in spirits. He was a devoted husband who would never have avoided me by—”

  I reached out a hand to stop her. “I don’t think he means anything by it, Goose,” I said quietly. “He just doesn’t think we belong in this neighborhood.”

  I approached the bar with Mary on my heels. The man standing behind it tossed the rag onto the counter and, spreading his hands out, leaned forward against the wood. It felt almost aggressive in nature, and if we weren’t two defenseless women, I would have thought he was anticipating a fight.

  “Are you Mr. Davies?” I asked. “I am Florence Nightingale, and this is my companion, Mary Clarke. We’ve come to ask you about a customer you may have had recently.”

  The man only grunted in response and returned to glass polishing.

  Up close, he was quite terrifying. He reminded me of a cadaver, tall and gaunt and seemingly uncomfortable in his ill-fitting clothes. It was surely difficult for him to find trousers and shirts that fit properly, as evidenced by the bony wrists that protruded far out from his sleeves. His face was adorned with a very long chin beard, of chestnut brown flecked with gray and remarkably well groomed, an incongruity against his rumpled clothing.

  The beard’s shape was an unfortunate choice for him, as it did nothing to conceal his prominent cheekbones, which rose up like mountain ridges on the sides of his face. His hair straggled around his temples and over his ears.
Overall, his hair growth gave the effect of a halo around his head.

  He held up a glass with his left hand, examining it in the light from the gasoliers. I noticed that two of his fingers were mostly gone, and the nubs showed gnarled skin on them, as if some blind butcher from a previous century had clipped his fingers and then sewn up the skin while wearing thick winter gloves.

  The man continued to work as though we were not standing across the bar from him. Thus far, he hadn’t been at all inquisitive about our presence.

  “Mr. Davies, please, if I may speak with you a moment about an incident that occurred here about a week ago.”

  He looked down at me through hooded lids and said nothing.

  “Sir, I must assure you that neither of us has an errant husband. I wish to ask you about the attack that happened about a week ago. It was upon the Herbert carriage, and their coachman was inadvertently killed.”

  His only reaction was increased color on his cheekbones.

  “Did you witness what happened?” I asked.

  Davies grunted again.

  This was going to prove very frustrating. “Mr. Davies, it is of utmost importance that I talk to you. My friend, Sidney Herbert, is the secretary at war, and his wife was almost murdered. The culprit must be found.”

  “Secretary at war, eh?” Davies said. His voice suggested that he wasn’t impressed at all. He turned around to put the glass on a shelf behind the bar, then turned back to me. “And care what the secretary at war thinks, why should I?” He gazed steadily at me, and I saw anger brimming in his muddy brown eyes.

  I was taken aback. “Because he is … responsible for this nation’s defense. He is the queen’s trusted servant. He will—”

  “Pretty words.” Davies said, practically sneering at me. “I’m sure Reverend Whitehead could use them in his next sermon. He’s as devoted to Her Majesty as Mr. Herbert seems to be.” Another glass went on the shelf.

  Whitehead. Why did I know that name?

  I pulled Fenton’s dice from my pocket. “Have you seen these before?” I asked, holding them out in my flat palm.

  Davies gave them a cursory glance. “Sure. Hundreds of times I’ve seen them before. Have a look around.” He waved a hand out over the rest of the public house. “Every soul in here has a pair just like them.”

  I thrust the dice at him again. “But look at the engraved markings atop each crown side. Aren’t they unusual?”

  He made an impatient noise, and I realized that, in my own frustration, I was being less than endearing. He took one of the dice from me and squinted at it, then dropped it back into my palm. “Men mark up game pieces in all sorts of manners to ensure their valuables don’t find their way into someone else’s pockets. Sometimes it be initials, sometimes it be an important date, and sometimes it just be pure nonsense.”

  I was disappointed that Mr. Davies could offer no more help than that. I also didn’t believe that the dice in Fenton’s pocket were inscribed with nonsense. I put them back in my pocket.

  Davies leaned against the wood counter once more. “Get back to my work, I must. The middle shift will end soon, and I must take care of the lads.”

  “Sir …” I began, unsure what would pierce his suspicions of me.

  Mary accomplished the task by interrupting me with five simple words. “Might we try an ale?”

  He raised a skeptical eyebrow at Mary, a woman of deepening middle age and stout, schoolmarmish looks. “Sample the wares here, you wish?”

  Mary nodded. “We both do.”

  He shrugged, took a glass from the shelf, and went to the stack of barrels behind the counter, each of which had a tap on the end and a different marking above it. He turned to look over his shoulder. “India ale you want? It would probably be the easiest on your female constitutions.”

  He twisted the tap, and a pale golden liquid flowed into the glass. He set the glass down in front of Mary and retrieved another to fill.

  “Why is it called India ale?” Mary asked. “You brew it here, do you not? It doesn’t come from India, does it?”

  Davies shook his head as he placed a second glass of warm liquid in front of me. “No, woman, from India it doesn’t come. The original India ale was brewed by a company located near the East India Docks. Quite fond of it the East India Company traders became, hence the name. We brew our own version of it.”

  I picked up the glass and sniffed the contents. The aroma transported me back to my childhood at Lea Hurst. Monday was baking day, and our cook would line tables and sills with rising loaves of yeasty bread, each waiting its turn in the oven. The smell of those loaves always triggered something primal in my youthful soul, and I could hardly wait to sample the first one out of the oven, which I always slathered with Cook’s freshly made butter.

  I took a tentative sip. It didn’t taste like my beloved bread. It had a fuller, stronger tang. It reminded me of summer grass, or perhaps freshly baled hay. It was a strange sensation on my tongue, but not unpleasant.

  Mary’s puckered expression suggested that she was not impressed at all with the ale, and I worried that she might spit it out. She eventually swallowed her mouthful down. I drank down a bit of my own, and as soon as Mr. Davies turned around again to tend to something, I poured part of her glass into my own so that he would not think she had rejected the beer.

  He faced us again, once more spreading his hands across the counter. I was surprised it didn’t have grooves shaped to fit his hands on it, given that he seemed to pose in the exact same spot each time. “What would you ladies say about the Lion’s India ale?”

  Mary pursed her lips, and this time I jumped in to answer for us both. “It is quite unusual. And tasty,” I added, taking another swallow for his benefit.

  Davies nodded in satisfaction. “Good ales we have here. Some brewers hop it too heavily for a pleasing drink, but the extra hops do make it able to survive the six-month journeys the East Indiamen make.”

  It was then that I noticed something I could not believe I hadn’t seen in the several minutes Mary and I had been sitting before the man. “What happened to your ear?” I asked.

  Davies instinctively reached up and pushed hair over his right ear to cover it, but not before I got a full view in the gaslight to see that the upper part was mangled. The top of the ear had just split open and was now bleeding.

  “Come!” I commanded, setting down my glass and walking to an empty table. I turned back to him and pointed at a chair. “Sit,” I further instructed.

  He obeyed me immediately, probably in shock at my transformation from pleading female to imposing nurse.

  I reached down into one of my voluminous dress pockets, where I carried an emergency supply of everything. My fingers found a roll of bandage and a soft leather case that held a pair of tiny scissors. I swiftly cut a piece of the linen and folded it multiple times, using it to staunch the flow of blood from his ear. Discarding that, I cut and folded another piece, which I asked Mary to hold against his ear while I wrapped the remaining length of the bandage around his chin and head to secure the pad in place.

  His shirt had some blood spatters on it and he now resembled a partially wrapped mummy, but we had stopped the bleeding before it became a serious problem.

  I pulled a chair around to face him, while Mary sat across the table. “That is a very nasty injury, sir. Was it damaged here at the brewery? Did your fingers also suffer an ordeal here?”

  “No,” he said, the good fingers of his right hand reaching up to touch his bandaged ear, as if to assure himself it was still there. He winced in pain as he rubbed over the spot, and a tiny prick of blood stained through the bandage.

  “I have a good liniment I can bring you,” I offered. “It will ease both the bleeding and the pain.”

  He nodded, and I sensed him softening toward me.

  “Has it ever been infected before?” I asked.

  He nodded again.

  “We shall have to keep an eye on it. I don’t want you fallin
g ill from it.”

  He gazed at me, and I knew he was coming to a decision. Finally, he spoke. “My position here I like. Don’t want to be fired.”

  “Of course not,” I said soothingly, wondering why talking to me about a thwarted murder attempt would see him terminated from employment at a brewery.

  Now Davies’s gaze shifted off to a distant point on the ceiling. “Lost my fingers to a rifle and my ear to a yataghan knife, all inside an hour. That was the one moment I regretted leaving my home in Aberdare, in Wales.”

  Wales. That certainly explained his odd speech patterns.

  “But with Ma already dead and Da gone in a mine collapse, what choice did I have but make my way into Her Majesty’s army? No other prospects.”

  I had the feeling we were about to hear another sad story about a resident of Soho, although Mr. Davies appeared to have decent employment and did not bear the aura of hopeless despair that seemed to consume everyone else in these parts.

  “Where did you receive your injuries, Mr. Davies?” I asked.

  He grimaced. “I was in the war with no purpose. No purpose, no glory, no benefit, no victories. Just a putrid, bloody mess.”

  The pain of whatever he had experienced was palpable.

  “Were you in the opium war?” I asked. “Or in India fighting the Sikhs?”

  He laughed joylessly. “If only it had been that pleasant. No, in Afghanistan I was.”

  As well read and studied as I was, I couldn’t for the life of me remember what that conflict had been about. I vaguely recalled that the trouble had started in the late thirties when I had not quite reached my majority.

  Wasn’t Afghanistan just an arid desert with no particular resources to speak of? Why had Great Britain even cared about it?

  “Sir, I confess I know very little about that war except that it was called the ‘Calamity in Afghanistan.’ ”

  He rolled his eyes. “It is known as the ‘Disaster in Afghanistan,’ ” he corrected me. “And for good reason.”